DD reception just can't seem to memorize letters?

She turns 5 in March and her teacher has told me that she's not remembering any letters so isn't beggining to blend. She told me to work at home with helping her remember them.

Today I began with A B and C and she just cant remember which is which!

She might get it all right...then 5 mins later, she's back to just guessing wrongly. She IS interested and seems to like working on the letters...I,m keeping it light and fun but I feel really worried now!

I did a lot of showing her each letter on a card then drawing them on the window etc but she just cant remember. The teacher says she'll give me a something-card (forgotten what its called) which is what dyslexic pupils use but she's using it in this case to help DD learn the letters...but I cant help but think now that maybe the teacher thinks she's dyslexic. She is also the SENCO....is it possible to tell if a child is dyslexic at the age of 4? Or is it just her age? She's bright in other ways...remembers songs and all kinds...very articulate and sociable.

What helps my DCs is making something as tactile as possible, rather than just looking at the letters.

Magnetic/wooden letters, making them out of play dough, drawing them in a tray of shaving foam/sand/glitter etc. I even made them out of wooden train track once, and a skipping rope so DD could walk along the letters!

Is she doing jolly phonics? The jolly songs cd is really good as having a song for each letter sound can really help. The more ways your DD can experience the letter, the better, if that makes sense.

The teacher told me she's the ONLY one in the class who is not learning any letters yet and I thought I don't believe you! In a class of 30 you're telling me that DD is the only one! Is it poissible that she's just not ready? Or more likely there's a problem?

I tried to do 3 letters this evening. Maybe I need to concentrate on them one at a time?

Mrz like when I point to a C for eg and say what's that? She can't remember it's a CUH....she just guesses. If I point to a b same thing...the ONLY ones she remembers reliably is S and O and I think it must be because they're pretty distinctive.

Ah, so she knows an 'S' (I always think of an 's' as looking like a wriggly snake, and funnily enough, the sound 's' is the start of the word snake), and she knows an 'o' (maybe because that's the shape your mouth makes when it makes the sound?).... so she is recognising some letters.

Does the school do any kind of body movement/signing with each letter? Maybe your dd needs that kind of thing to make the connection? If the school doesn't then perhaps you could try and help her that way? Try the more distinctive letters, like 'i' (because it has a dot on the top) etc etc.

Good luck - I think your dd just needs a different connection and then she'll start recognising them and matching them to the sounds.

Thanks Learnandsay but having looked at the link, I don't think it's going to help DD as the pictures include the capital as well as the lower case and it might confuse her. She needs to see only lower case at the moment.

I would normally ask parents to check eye sight and hearing first then go back to basics focusing on the first 6 sounds (if the school use Jolly Phonics - s,a,t,i,p,n) recognising the letters, saying the sound and reading and spelling simple words (sat, at, it, in, an. pan, pat , tap, sit, tin, tan) 10 mins a day

There are other programmes but I would stick with what the school uses initially.

Mrs Mushroom - My colleagues and I have helped struggling children to overcome this difficult first hurdle with very, very carefully structured little stories starting with only five sounds . For the first 3 books no other sounds are introduced and little animal characters help in all sorts of ways. The last child I saw who was in a similar situation to your dd was the one child who didn't recognise his name by the end of Reception, his mother was told. By the start of Year 1 he was terrified and by the end of September he was on the way to becoming a school refuser. I introduced him to the 'Sam' books - www.piperbooks.co.uk - and within an hour he was able todecode/ read (not guess!) the first little books and read the first one to his Mum and then to his grandma. He was then given extra help at school and has never looked back, in spite of severe dyslexia on both sides of the family. Have a look at the website if you've time- the books are used with all main Synthetic Phonics programmes so the same processes of blending and segmenting words is taking place. I was instrumental in bringing these books to the UK - and have had wonderful feedback particularly with children who initially struggle to get on the first rung of the ladder.Good luck .

MrsMushroom, would doing it as a game make it fun? I played loads of games with DD and other children that I know or knew when they were learning letters. You could make a pile of snap cards with s a t p i n (or any other small number of letters/sounds, but lots of each one) and just work on seeing that one s is the same as another s, with lots of praise whenever she gets it right or is really making a good effort/concentrating. You need lots of each one so there will be lots of matches. Then move on to saying the sound when you pick up the pair of cards if she can see that s and s are the same or p and p or whatever. Obviously let her win if you possibly can.

You could make BIG letters (in fact, you could draw outlines and she could help colour in etc) and put them all round the room on chairs, back of sofa, table etc and make her run/jump/climb to each letter when you call out the sound. She won't know them to start with so you can describe them (eg s, the curly letter that looks like a snake, or p, there is a round part and a long stalk). Treats/rewards/stickers as required.

Dominoes with letters (which you make out of card) would also be quite good fun.

You could also do magnetic letters on the fridge and get her to race herself at bringing you the correct letter (you might need a few sets to have plenty of letters of each type - or make them with her on card and stick them somewhere out of your sight with blu-tac so she can work out which one to bring herself - you can give her clues about the shape of the letters if you want to/she needs it).

Mrs Mushroom - The first five sounds have been chosen for a number of reasons - not least because they are sounds that blend very easily - No 'plosive' sounds like 'p' 't' for instance. They are:/s/ /a/ /m/ /ie/ /ee/'S''s' 'a' 'm' 'I' 'ee'

Very, very gradually more letter/sound correspondences are introduced. No high-frequency word learning, no 'tricky' words

This allows 'real' stories to be constructed - lots of expressiveness, amusing incidents, and interaction between the animals. And although there is heaps of repetition (which lots of children require, regardless of whether they are very bright or not), the instruction is always via the decoding route. The books are used very successfully with all the main synthetic phonics programmes including Jolly Phonics, Read-Write Inc, PhonicsInternational, L & S and Sound Reading System.

It's hard to explain but sometimes when a child is 'stuck' learning abstract sound-letter correspondences, learning to read via very carefully constructed stories can be very motivational and boost confidence tremendously.

I would like to add though that we did seem to have some progress last night and she did appear to retain some letters....I wonder now if the problem is that she simply hasn't quite associated the shape with the sound...so I say look DD...this is an S....see the S....and do the sign for S....a moment later she's nonplussed when I ask her to point to the S....she HEARS the sound...she sees the shape..knows it looks like a squiggle or a snake....but she doesn't associate them together.